New Port Richey and Dade City must be taking leadership lessons from Tallahassee.
You're cringing, right? Considering it took a special session just to reach a budget accord, it is not exactly a shining example of astute governing. The misbehavior isn't exclusive to Florida's capital, either. Around the nation, state and local governments are forgoing tax increases in favor of fees to pay for services.
Florida wants residents to pay more for college tuition, to keep a poisonous reptile, to undergo a criminal background check, or to buy prepaid cellular telephone service.
The two Pasco cities, however, want to charge fees for basic government services financed from the general fund, the primary revenue source for which is property taxes. Last week, the New Port Richey City Council moved forward with a plan to charge fees for fire protection and for street lights. The Dade City Commission confronts a similar vote Tuesday.
Though officials talk of dedicated funding sources and requiring government to act more like a business, the true reason is cowardice. There is little courage to ask property owners to pay higher taxes.
It's unfortunate thinking. Ad valorem taxes are more progressive than across-the-board fees because they are assessed according to an individual's property wealth. Those of greater means can afford to pay more. But anti-tax rhetoric has dominated Pasco County's political landscape for more than a decade, including four referendum defeats since 1990, making elected office-holders reluctant to seek higher tax rates.
Cutting services isn't considered an attractive alternative, either.
"That went over like a ton of bricks when we did it in '99 through attrition," remembered Tom Finn, New Port Richey's vice-mayor and a proponent of the new fees.
So cities are seeking surrogate taxes for basic services. Mills give way to nickels and dimes and the resulting financial hit is more regressive than a property tax hike. It means charging the owner/occupants of the cities' poorest homes the same as its most affluent property owners.
In Dade City, this skewed thinking means the 141 owner-occupied homes valued at an average of less than $18,000 that contribute no property taxes will kick in the same for fire protection and street lights as the owner of a quarter-million-dollar house on Church Street. That is curious governing considering Dade City has a lower property tax rate now than it did 12 years ago.
Both locales should be concerned about widespread poverty, judging by school district statistics that show nearly all of the 1,000 pupils attending Cox and Pasco elementary schools in Dade City qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. More than three of every four pupils at Richey Elementary and two of every three at Marlowe Elementary in New Port Richey fall into the same category. Translation: Both cities are home to substantial populations with low and moderate incomes.
But that seems to be of little concern. How else do you explain both cities plan to assess their new fees on buildings owned by nonprofits, effectively reducing the money available for charitable services? Dade City even wants to charge the fees on public school buildings. The school district has promised a legal challenge to the $11,000 bill. New Port Richey exempted schools from its plan.
Charging churches and charities is so far off base even one of the county's leading anti-tax proponents questioned its wisdom.
"Schools should be exempt. Certainly charities should be exempt," said Bill Bunting, chairman of the Pasco Republican Executive Committee. "These people give a lot back to the community and I think that is something they have to look at. Churches do an excellent job of reaching out and helping."
In Dade City, which is considering an immediate, one-time fee for the second half of the current fiscal year, the proposed assessment is $16 per house to pay off the debt on an existing firetruck and $16.47 for street lights. In New Port Richey, typical homeowners are likely to pay just under $10 per month ($8 for fire, $1.89 for lights) in new assessments.
But New Port Richey's idea of fairness is to drop the property tax levy, from $6.25 per $1,000 of assessed value to $5.75. Do the math. That's roughly $120 annually from everybody to pay for fire and street lights accompanied by a $150 property tax cut for a typically affluent homeowner with a $325,000 house along the Cotee River.
Sort of like Tallahassee's thinking to kill a sales tax holiday for everyone, while renewing $200-million in tax breaks for corporations and investors.
Forget the Legislature, it is time to look elsewhere for leadership role models. City officials should look in the mirror.
